Before you jump on me about them having full CDs, when I said "checksum", I really meant they might have some kind of cryptographic hash (e.g., MD5 as is believed), but this is not entirely equivelent to possessing a full CD to check the data against, especially since the client presumably allows for a certain number of bad challenge responses (e.g., scratched CDs). Unless mp3.com publishes the protocol they use to authenticate the challenge replies against the CD or the representation of it (e.g., hash), we really can't know with any certainty what method they are using, nor how secure it is (even the implimentation of the same protocols can make or break its security). Given the fact that the burden of having their service effectively cracked is not on them (at most they have to replace it with a better method), I could easily see them underestimating the threat from hackers, or simply not caring (figuring instead that they can battle it in the courts and absorb whatever costs...and given the history of the CEO and what not, I wouldn't put that past them)
..gotta bolt.
Cryptographically Secure Software like this == BS
on
MP3.com Loses In Court
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· Score: 2
Your comment is based on a flawed, second-hand understanding of how BeamIt works.
My observation is not entirely second hand. I saw this stuff in its early stages, and heard rumblings of it well before it was official. Also, I used this software last night, nothing is truely inconsistent with what I said...
"fake CD device, with all the data mp3.com's is looking to verify" - the algorithm makes random checks of a CDs data. Spoofing would require some other technique than simply saving and delivering only the expected data.
How do you know it is cryptographic? Even if you do "know", how do you know it is sufficiently cryptographic? I highly doubt they store the entire CD in its original form. In fact, I suspect they store just a few cryptographic checksums for the sake of bandwidth, database design, storage space, speed, and reliability. Knowing mp3.com, I strongly doubt they're greatly concerned with the actual security; so long as they can say they took "reasonable precautions", or what have you, they feel they can get away with this. [In fact, I suspect the slashdot communitity and other Net Zealots would rally behind mp3.com even if it is proven to be trivial to pirate from it, and that the vast majority of the service's traffic is piracy (This is certainly true with napster)] Thus, I think it is highly probable that all the data the service is looking for could be captured and sufficiently described in a couple bytes (a fraction of the actual mp3 album's size in any case). Furthermore, there is not one product that comes to mind that claims cryptographic security that has actually withstood hackers efforts--certainly none where the interests in actual security do not lie with the creator.
"you then have access to those mp3s from anywhere you go (or you can just download the mp3s)." - Once authenticated, you have access to the streaming MP3 file of that particular CD. You are not empowered to download tracks in MP3 format that are suitable for redistribution. Of course, there are ways to save the streamed file, but there are much easier ways to get those files than spoofing the CD checker and saving the streamed MP3. MyMP3 didn't make that any easier than what was already possible -- in fact it was less convenient to use as a piracy tool.
I must disagree with you here. It is a trivial matter to convert these streams into mp3 files. The hackers could also distribute a program to automate it, not that it is really necessary. In addition, I've been around IRC and warez pups long enough to know that the most limiting factor of piracy distribution is bandwidth and storage space. If hackers could enable users to download from mp3.com's multihoned fiber optic site with essentially infinite bandwidth (it will naturally scale with demand) with only a mere 100bytes per CD out of their pipes and harddrives, it would be very easy for them, and the user. It would also be next to impossible to stop. Think about it for a minute, one ~5 megabyte upload to a newsgroups (or many of them) and the group could give access to anyone with access to that newsgroup to my.mp3.com's entire CD collection (assuming 50k CDs with 100 bytes per CD representation). Very very trivial. It'd would beat the pants off of napster for 99.99% of its traffic (e.g., all the popular 50k CDs mp3.com has archived)--much improved bandwidth, easier searching, better presentation, reliable download sites, and a huge collection of CDs at your finger tips in an organized fashion. I'd bet dollars to pesos that someone figures out a way to make it happen too. (assuming this service doesnt get shut down too rapidly)
The more likely threat, from the view of the RIAA, was simply the sharing of CDs to gain access to streaming MP3s rather than buying the music. Lost sale? So they say, but I don't buy it. The truth is, regardless of profit loss or gain, RIAA wanted to enforce its licensing rights, as the representative of the industry (which includes the artists) and ensure it received its fair share of profits.
RIAA may or may not be motivated by more self-centered concerns as well, but this does not automatically rule out the possibility of a serious threat to their revenues as I described. Even though this tool does not yet exist, these things can take years on appeal, and they might never get an injunction against them (atleast a timely one).
"As unfair as it might seem, I'm not so sure that RIAA is necessarily being greedy or overzealous here." - blasphemy for a Slashdotter where "music wants to be free" but I agree with this. Vilifying an industry that's trying to maintain its tried and true (and legal) revenue stream isn't logical. They are in the business of making money...making it for their investors, their executives, their engineers, producers, public relations, promoters, agents, distributors, and...oh yeah...the performers and writers too.
I'm not your typical slashdotter. In fact, I'm not your typical anything. I don't walk lockstep with any group, be they capitalist or communist, or what have you. That being said, I think this "information wants to be free" line is a line of idealistic bullshit. Also, I'd like to remind you, that despite the "net" and all the much acclaimed innovations by Net advocates, the artists still choose to sign with these major labels of their own volition, even though they only get of a small fraction of the revenues from each sale. Nobody is pointing a gun to the artists' heads and forcing them to sign. This means that the labels are providing more value to the artists through distribution, marketing, sound engineers, etc. than if they tried to go it alone. It may be true that the labels enjoy an unfair percentage of the revenues, but even here I have doubts. If you look at these publically owned corporations, their profitability is not all that high. Yes, it is lucrative, but not much more so than any other business. It a lot costs money to promote, market, distribute, etc. Thus, even though they enjoy a large share of the profits of a sucessfull CD, they must plow it back into their operations so they can continue to be sucessfull and provide greater value to the artists.
A few decades ago, the "music industry" feared the sale of recorded music thinking it would kill the primary source of revenue -- the live performance. Today that seems laughable. Not that long ago, the industry fought to keep analog recording out of the consumers' bill of rights because of its perceived impact on unit sales. Eventually, and with the help of the Audio Home Recording Act, the RIAA gave up its opposition to analog copying since the method degrades each generation and, uh, they get a royalty for blank media sold to compensate them (now THAT chaps my ass).
Yes, this is often cited. I would never claim the industry is infallible. However, there is a world of difference between this and the internet with unopposed piracy. My.mp3.com with the piracy i've described makes it entirely too trivial to obtain songs. Given the growing presence of broadband (which makes my.mp3.com a joy to use, I know from experience), and the plethora of mp3 devices (have you seen the Nomad Jukebox), I can see a real threat if internet piracy goes unchecked. Pirating mp3s through this service may very well be easier than running out to the store or ordering it onlinem, atleast amongst users who are sufficiently intelligent, broadband computer users, and owners of sophisticated mp3 devices.
The bottom line is that the industry may be myopic and stupid and greedy sometimes, but that does not automatically invalidate rational criticisms of my.mp3.com's service in regards to piracy.
Without getting too involved in the legal issues and what not...
Did anyone ever consider the possibility of this my.mp3.com service really trivializing mp3 piracy? I mean mp3.com writes some trivial piece of software that reads the CD. This might be OK, if it really works as claimed. However, I have little doubt that it wouldn't take a hacker long to write a hack to "fool" mp3.com's software. It would something like fakeCD.exe (or was it.com), only you punch in a code representing the CD, which then creates a fake CD device, with all the data mp3.com's is looking to verify (and _nothing_ more). Once mp3.com's software has scanned your "fake CD" for a few seconds, if my understanding is correct, you then have access to those mp3s from anywhere you go (or you can just download the mp3s). Then all the little warez groups can effectively distribute mp3s at people with a mere 20 bytes or so of data (a compressed representation of whatever the software is looking for).
The point being that this has the possibility to really trivialize the pirating of mp3s. Based on my years on IRC and what not, the primary limiting factor for the distribution of warez is the lack of bandwidth on the part of the groups, not the lack of willing parties. Certainly if #cracks on efnet, for example, can maintain a large database of serial numbers (a few bytes a piece) on a bunch of different bots, the same could, and would, be done for my.mp3.com. Or, just create a single "official" warez file, which contains the codes for all popular CDs...if each CD representation (e.g., artist name, album name, cd identifier, etc.) takes 100bytes, that'd be about 10k CDs in a 1 meg CSV file. Very trivial to distribute and virtually impossible to stop that, plus it's only one download, so it'd be harder for all involved parties to get busted.
I think this is dooable, and I think it would be trivial enough to have a profound impact on RIAA's collective earnings. As unfair as it might seem, I'm not so sure that RIAA is necessarily being greedy or overzealous here.
Ok so radio stations are corporate controlled. So what? How does Metallica suing Napster for their stuff being illegally distributed really stop you from distributing your stuff on the internet? It is not as if Napster is the only way to distribute "indy" music on the internet. In fact, dare I say it, it's a horrible way to do it because the user can only search for substrings; this is hardly an ideal way to promote your music. Mp3.com, numerous ftp sites, and the like provide a far far better way to get your music out to the masses. Nor is it as if, metallica is suing to stop YOUR music from being distributed for free against your wishes; they are only suing for their own IP. If napster is all it claims to be, then the absolute absence of pirated music should not interfere with its more legitimate activities (although everyone knows in reality that that piracy is the only reason they exist).
In addition, this "information wants to be free" line is crap. There is no way in hell anyone could have ever produced an exact copy of metallica's mp3s. In other words, Metallica's attempts to stop the illegal distribution of mp3 of their CDs does nothing to stop the legitimate sharing of "free" music. Unlike the possible argument with other forms of IP protection, it does not possibly restrain anyone from indepedantly creating their own works. Metallica would only produce their music if they could make a living from it, and maybe even a "killing". Thus, given the choice between everything being "free" (read: No metallica) versus somethings costing money (read: metallica), even the rational cheapskate should prefer the latter. Even if the person personally don't want to purchase (or lack the funds) Metallica, they can still listen to it on the radio, copy their music, and generally benefit from its existence.
sweet, tnx for telling us. I've always loved Kenwood's quality, so i'll definetly consider this (would appreciate a link,...if I cant find it). The CDR/mp3 capability has some definite advantages. However, my primary motivation for an mp3 player is to have a HUGE collection of music EASILY (assuming the empeg UI is any good, which i'm not sure of yet) available at my finger tips. Having to insert or find CDs just isn't quite the same thing, even if it is 8x as much music as standard audio cds.
But what does it really mean to "figure" it out? If we were advanced humans, but ignorant of CDs, we would still enjoy the use of sound as a medium of communication. We would already understand the language, and what certain instruments are meant to sound like. In other words, we would know what to look for. The alien would have no idea to look for "sound", they wouldn't know how it sounded, and they certainly wouldn't know our language. I think establishing meaningfull communication with a species which we have nothing in common with would be very very difficult. It would probably be impossible if it's not interactive communication (e.g., one way).
Disclaimer: I'm haven't studied this stuff a great deal. But if someone could give me a good argument as to how we could go about this, that would be most interesting. I've heard about communication through "math" and what not, and while I understand it could establish intelligence, I fail to see where else it could lead.
As much as I disagree with Perens in other areas, I don't think this is necessarily US centric. Russia may very well have the scientists and the engineering experience to design these things, but that is only one important element of the space program. They still need to manufacture. Unfortunately, manufacturing is largely a function of the economy. Not only does it cost billions, which Russia does not have, to produce these things under ideal conditions, but when Russia doesn't even have the stability or the economy for OTHER (as in the rest of the economy) production, it is going to be next to impossible to follow through on the plans. While Russia's economy under communist rule was piss poor, they were sufficiently stable and "wealthy" for such narrow objectives. Today, they are not. They lack to totalitarian rule to divert resources around arbitrarily. The limited infrastructures which they had built up are falling apart, or being torn down. For example, Moscow has had severe problems lately even keeping power lines up, because desperate people have been cutting down high power lines for the cabling (to sell presumably). Add to this problems with staffing, corruption, etc. It would be difficult to even build a modern automobile today (which is why you see very little investment of this kind in Russia), never mind spacecraft.
The bottom line is, that, if Russia can't follow through on their promises, it may very well cost as much much more be politic. That being said, there might be something to be said for this cooperation (e.g. promote pride amongst Russian people, promote mutual good will, etc.), even though it costs us more (in the short run?).
I disagree. I don't think you've thought it through. If Amazon patents the 1-click under the tax idea, and applies, say, a 5% tax on it. Competitors will simply opt not to use it, because end users will opt not to pay it. End users will simply decide, "well, if I use the slightly longer method to buy my products, I avoid this stupid 5% tax", and thus, the users have determined the "value" of the patent. Amazon would have to drop the tax to nothing basically for something so useless. As it is now, other companies can opt not to use the 1-click, but it may put them at a disadvantage, or they can fight a big huge expensive very inefficient court battle, and maybe win, maybe lose.
Your above argument is incoherant. In both the present and the proposed situation, the pricing, and thus the effective control of the usage, is entirely up to Amazon. They may or may not sell anything at the specified price, but it is the same in both situations. The only difference being that your proposal says: "You must license your technology, but you can choose the price". For all intents and purposes though, this gives Amazon the ability to stop anyone from using it. The power to determine the pricing lies in Amazon's hands in both situation. Whether the usage comes from today's licensing fees or your proposed "tax", buyers' (read: market) strength is the same.
The cost for anyone to manufacture the pancreas is essentially the same. Normally, if you had a monopoly, you'd set the price to say $2000 above cost. So, the end price comes to $6000, as in your example, but the manufacturing cost was only $4000. You're making a 33% profit. If you set up a 33% tax under my system, others can then manufacture and sell the pancreas at a base price of their choosing, and you get 33% extra from each sale. If someone out there develops better manufacturing techniques than you, then we have some savings.
My example, in case you did not understand, was: 2000 (monopoly rents) + 4000 (manufacturing and administrative costs) = 6000 (selling price). The point being that the power to reduce prices really does not rest in the competitions hand, as the price is mainly a function of monopoly rents, not manufacturing costs. You might have an argument that they could reduce manufacturing costs slightly, but this is nominal. In fact, I would say that the propensity of the inventing company to overcharge would more than overtake whatever savings the competitors are able to generate (almost by definition). Thus, prices would not be reduced. The pharma-company with the "life saving" medication can still determine the selling price.
It would appear that most companies think all patents are worthwhile, since they don't hesitate to patent anything and everything they can think of. Given my Amazon example, I think my system would discourage frivolous patents.
The advantage for the tax system is that patented technology is completely unrestricted in use by others. Thus, one of our complaints is resolved - the technology is allowed to flourish and be used freely. Under the current system, it's common for a few licenses to be signed, and everyone else locked out. Or, in the case of medicine, for a monopoly to be held as long as possible.
I would hardly say a system which is burdened with the same or more economic bagage than today is "unrestricted." The "sharing" you discuss would be heavily contigent on the "tax" the inventor sets. So it is not as if alternative companies could cherry pick the best patents and idea. For instance, if I spend 500m inventing an artificial pancreas, and I know the market for my product is only so big (e.g., diabetics), and that my patent is not going to be worth much in 2 years, I would be sure to set my per unit tax up such that I collect atleast 2000 dollars on every sale. Thus, when the competition comes along, they have variable costs of atleast 2000 dollars plus materials and labor, not to mention the fixed costs of setting up a plant, buying the machinery, etc. So what we have in a product that sells for at least 6000 dollars, quite possibly more expensive (because I set the tax) than my operation. What little other benefit provided to the consumer through "sharing" is soon lost too. If the competition wishes to add other IP protected features from other companies, say, a 10 year life battery, they're going to have to pay, say, 4000 here....so this mixing, matching, and building upon other things quickly can become prohibitably expensive.
The value of patents varies tremendously. Those patents that deserve maximum compensation and reward can still get it. Those patents that are worth a small amount get that. And those that are worthless, like the 1-click, really would be worthless.
That is non sequitur. Amazon, under your system, is still entitled to charge whatever they please. So long as they hold the one-click patent, and it holds up in court (which I doubt it will today), they could charge all of their competitors a fee which would allow them to charge less than the competition. The competitors who wish to use the technology still must pay whatever Amazon desires, just like today (again, assuming the courts support amazon which I doubt). Amazon's theoretical patent protection is worth quite a bit in actuality, but they did not create this value. Your system simply doesn't fix this.
Furthermore, your statement that the return of a patent would be contingent on its value is meaningless. Holding a patent today, in and of, itself does not bring the inventor any return. People must buy or utilize the patent in order to have any hope of return. Thus, worthless patents are worthless. Worthwhile patents are worth a lot. Your system does not change this.
I have clearly said many times that, in my opinion, the patent holder would set the tax rate, so you can end the arguments saying that my system has the government or some academic set the "value" of a patent
The problem is that your assertion that your "system" would necessarily solve issues such as overpriced medicine is utterly incoherant with the above. If it is entirely up to the owner, they can price it prohibitively high. In other words, companies that don't want to share, won't. Companies that do, will. This is how it is today, the same for all intents and purposes. The only other alternative is to formally administrate, with academic types, who don't know the first thing about business.
Uh, no. It'd be quite different. Or are you telling me your railing against my idea so strongly, but really, it's no different from the current system which you apparently view as perfect?
Read above, goes hand in hand with it.
Other funding models - public funds, private fund-raising organizations for example. They exist today, but are a pretty small percentage of the spending
Having been behind many sucessfull high tech companies, I can tell you that the vast majority of these "alternative" (read: non-profit) models are a joke. They are run by academics almost by definition. This is not a market based system, it's nearer to central planning (read: communism). In addition, these organization are almost by definition going to have burn through money like nothing else. Who is going to foot the bill? Right now, you have a few organizations which can scrounge up a little change (e.g., the NIH, NSF, NASA, ADA, AMA, etc.) But this system would not work on a large scale, a little charity here and there does not fuel our economy. It would require serious tax dollars. Not that i'm entirely opposed to government investment, but generally speaking I think it's not a replacement for genuine capitalist motivations for investment (read: de-centralized).
I suppose this goes hand in hand with your assertion about the efficiency of the current system. And abuses of the system don't happen. Patent lawsuits really aren't happening
Umm, no. The patent office has serious flaws. They could be improved somewhat. But it is the courts where the power truely lies, the patent office has always operated as more of a filling service than anything out (granted, they do some filtering, but not much more). I do not envision anyway to really change this all that much for the better. Many of these legal fights are inevitable, even necessary. Assuming you could ever hire the "best" people to be patent examiners, there is no way you can insure that they are honest or accurate. Intellectual property protection is by its very nature highly complex. It's really not cut out for one guy to summarily grant or dismiss everything...thus we rely on the courts. I don't think it's "perfect", but I don't see a more optimal solution...certainly not yours.
The tax system wouldn't bring enough reward for the risk. Here's your only argument of substance, and I'll grant it's a possibility. However, I think it's more likely that the tax system could bring in even more money for patent holders. Since everyone could make the patented products, the market would drive down the base price. The tax then makes up the "research" cost of the product. If the tax is set right, it is the same effect as the monopoly setting the price right for maximum profits. However, the advantage for the tax system is that patented technology is completely unrestricted in use by others (no need for licensing approval, no way for patent holder to play favorites), and the value of patents varies tremendously - a fact that is inadequately accounted for by the current system, but which is handled pretty elegantly by the tax idea
I don't think risk and reward can be understated. Since you are making noise about reducing "costs" or "profits", the curbing of rewards, and hence reducation innovation cannot be ignored. I don't see way how this system could drive down the base price significantly, while allowing innovation to remain constant (read: preserving rewards). The costs in most of these products involve the R&D costs, the initial outlays, marketing, etc.... Where you see increased costs is where companies will charge a premium for a new product...which is part of their reward....which is what you say you're going to try preserve.
The more people want the product, the more revenue the tax will generate.
Perhaps, but if the rate is set arbitrarily, it may (and probably would) be less than what the risk takers currently make, so you're less apt to see investment like that.
I'm not interested in providing high degrees - I'm interested in providing a return based on the market value of the patent.
You might not be interested in it, but you can be sure the risk takers are. There are many fields where even with today's "monopolies" they hardly break even on R&D. The more you cut potential reward, the less profitable you make it, the more you increase the aggregate risk. Do not forget that these inventors rely on external capital. So even if one sucessfull firm returns 10x what was invested, the outside investors need atleast that to break even on expected value, because they investors aren't necessarily able to improve their odds--they don't know who the winners are going to be. This is especially true with bio and med tech firms.
Your assuming the current system doesn't get "set" by the gov.? How do you control the cost a monopoly charges for a needed product? Say, a product that saves people's lives? What's to stop them from charging an infinite price? Insurance companies and government. A tax system that I'm suggesting could give the patent holders the choice of tax rate they want applied to their patent. The government might simply set some limits on that tax rate.
First off, most patents aren't this "necessary". There are normally other alternatives available. Second, empirically speaking, there is simply no evidence of this. Hundreds of life saving inventions have been invented in the US alone, and not one case. Third, the companies only want to maximize profits, the maximum price is not the way to go about this. Fourth, the law can always intervene in truely extreme cases. Fifth, these limits are extremely dangerous for previously mentioned reasons (e.g., risk and return). It may be better from a utilitarian perspective to allow a couple people to die as the result of economic concerns, if the alternative is killing the thing that is saving even more lives.
So, the patent is effectively worthless. No different in my system. Probably the patent holder would choose to "drop" their patent, or the tax rate.
Not worthless, just the effective life of most patents is not nearly as long as most slashdot juniors believe.
I suggest the inventor set the tax rate, so it's as high or low as they choose/need.
If the inventor sets the rate, it would be the same as today's system for all intents and purposes. Companies license their technology ALL the time. In fact, unlike you alluded to, few companies will sit on patents which are worthwhile. If they can't make use of them, they'll generally sell or license them. There is a market for them.
Hmmm, interesting fear. I'm not sure I'd be worried about this. It would thus encourage the sharing of technology and knowledge, and would still provide substantial benefit to innovation.
If a company cannot gain a competetive advantage by spending millions of dollars on R&D, they simply won't. Your system might allow already existing technology to be commercially shared, but that does not mean future technology will come out (and thus will not be shared at all).
Yes! Let the market decide - not "experts", not academics, and not a monopoly!
What market?!?! If the inventors determine their percentages, it might as well be today's system. If not, then you're depending on a more arbitrary system to determine how much is "fair". What a "good" technology is. You come to depend on a bunch of academics who decide what to do..
One should also keep in mind the number of technologies left to languish under patent protection, and the number of technologies left to languish because there's no way to recoup the research costs. There are illnesses they know how to cure, but don't because it would cost a lot, and only 500 people a year die from them, so, why bother? The system we have is not efficient, and there's nothing wrong with developing new ways of dealing with the problem. My ideal is that there'd be multiple funding models in place, but the current patent system really discourages people from using other models.
The system is efficient. There has never been a time in history, or a place, which pars the level of effort or result into developing technologies. The technologies that "languish" are generally obselete and worthless. Any decently managed company which is aware of any usefull technology would sell it or use it if they thought it was dooable. Lastly, look at the profitability of almost any of these companies. You can claim they have monopolies all you want, but on the aggregate none of them are making a killing. R&D is very very expensive and risky. I can't stress this enough.
...What "multiple funding models"? Sounds like abstract and poorly developed concept.....
anyhow, office is shutting down...apologies in advance for spelling, gramatical, typos, html, etc. errors.
I really wasn't expecting you to reply here. You could have replied in the comment. However, this thread is labeleled offtopic (OT), and I think most people can just step around it. Since you replied here, I might as well do the same....
My problem with this your reply is that a great many of these Open Source advocates claim (including you, I believe, but i'll give you the benefit of the doubt) that Open Source is superior in every way. Their excuse for the lack of Open Source domination in most areas, goes something like: "Open source hasn't been around long enough", "Not enough eyes here", "this is too new", etc. However, with your example (and others, where software derives from GPL software) these arguments do not hold water. The companies are merely adding to something that already exists--they do not have any sort of headstart or propietary advantage. If the propietary/commercial process is inferior as claimed, the companies have nothing to add (atleast nothing that would withstand matching efforts by an involved Open Source community). What rational person would buy a commercial product, when they can get Open Source software that services (according to numerous advocates) their needs better? Virtually no one. Thus, why the need for "publicity against Be"? Why the need for implicit or explicit legal threats? Why make GPL viral--as opposed to BSD style license (other than allowing for certain eventualities)?
If you merely feel that GPL is less than a perfect replacement for commercial/propietary software, but morally superior (or superior from a long term utilitarian perspective), and thus needs protection, that makes sense (in the context of the assertions). But this is not what I've heard from the vast majority of advocates. If I am reading you wrong, or if you disagree with these "advocates", then I wish you'd step out of only-positive-open-source-words-allowed mode, and speak candidly. I don't believe you're doing Open Source any good in the long run by allowing these clearly contradictory messages to go unchallenged; it will ultimately serve to discredit the movement.
I asked you a question at: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=00/04/18/133 4211&cid=293 You responded to my original comment, but completely misinterpreted what I said, and did not address my question in any way, shape, or form. I would appreciate a meaningfull response.
Your plan, like many, sounds fine in theory. The inventors get "rewarded" for their efforts. Whoopie. However, you are ignoring the very important relationship of risk and return. Just because you provide "some return" to the risk taker, the inventor, does not mean he will continue to take risk. These so-called monopolies happen to be a very efficient way to provide a high degree of return. Perhaps it is sometimes too high, but to propose that the government sets what is "fair" begs for the creation of a far less efficient system.
Furthermore, the mere fact that the government grants a "monopoly" on the idea for 17 years, does not mean the holder enjoys any such protection. In the vast majority of cases, competitors come out with equivelent products without having to go through the patent. So, if the effective life of the patent is only 5 years (actually quite high in many areas), it is all that much more important that the inventor ramp up his profits at the outset. To provide a smooth (or flat) "patent tax" tax, or one that is set arbitrarily by the government, might prove harmfull in two ways. If reward (read: tax x usage) are too low at the outset, this will lower the incentive for the inventor. Second, if it is too low, it may discourage the competing companies from trying to come up with unique alternative solutions of their own. Instead, they just "license" it as your "reasonable" fee. All in all, it would create a pretty apathetic system...perhaps not quite as bad as no IP, but significantly worse than what we have now.
In closing, the patent system is more necessary than it ever was. Sure, there are some abuses, but it is blown out of proportion by slashdot users. Slashdot confuses the mere existence of a patent, with the ability to profit and enjoy that protection. The patent office has been flawed for years, but the test is not the patent office, it is the courts. In other words, the granting of a patent does not mean it holds up in the real world, so to blow a few odd patents up as proof that "innovation" is now impossible is simply not true. [Yes, I agree the patent office has serious flaws,...but many proposals are unrealistic. There is always going to be disagreements and flaws in any system you create, that is human nature...] Many slashdot users simply fail to understand that not everything can be created like Linux (e.g., people working part-time in ragtag fashion). They seem to think that some panel of "experts", is a better decider of "value" than the market. Yet, if you talk to most any proven entreprenuer/inventor, they scoff at the idea of academics deciding value.... I've known numerous entreprenuers with proven track records to go in front of these "alternative sources of financing" boards (e.g., NIH, NSF, etc.) with great and truely usefull ideas, only to be rejected [or given peanuts] (not even for financial reasons, the money went to far less worthy projects)...only to be ultimately proven right. Lastly, one need look no further than the massive amounts spent by large and small companies alike to conclude that the _actual_ IP system works decently.
My sentiments exactly. Something tells me though that Perens had every intention of dodging my question. So I really doubt he'll have the courage to bite the bullet now. I mean, gasp, can you imagine admitting that open source has flaws? That might just be non-religious!
I'm sorry, but you're pulling this out of your ass. Is it possible you're right? I guess. But you have absolutely no way to prove this, and you are wrong about some of your statements. There is nothing random about the selection of the pilot on your flight, nor, for that matter, the rest of the pilots up in the sky with you. They are carefully selected professionals, who generally take their jobs very seriously. If they don't, the FAA is all over them like white on rice. They have sophisticated radar, and accident investigations to prevent repeated errors.... I could go on. Compare this with driving: No one on the road is tested or screened worth a damn (at least not in the US). So what you have is essentially random drivers next to you on the road. If a driver has a demonstratably horrible driving record, you're lucky if the DMV even confiscates their license. What more is many of these supposedly suspended drivers still drive. Add to this 18-wheelers, and truckers who are not quite all there (ever seen some of those double logging trucks in washington state?), soccer moms in 4 ton SUVs on the cell phone driving 20 miles over the limit swerving into the opposing traffic, pot holes, blind free way onramps, etc. I could see your arguing this if you live in like bummfuck north dakota (where you can be virtually alone on a road), but if you live in a major city, it is really hard to deny the risks.
I am a good driver. I am defensive driver. I live in philly. I know I increase my safety significantly, but having driven on I76 and numerous other roads often, I know that I only have so much control. I've seen little imports with absolutely no escape route (sometimes it simply is impossible to avoid, other than not driving at all) get crushed by truckers. I am not foolish enough to think that even my driving is safer than flying on a major jet airliner (as opposed to those commuter and charter flights)
Heh, no such thing as bad publicity eh? Why don't you tell that to the Dow Corning, makers of sillicon breast implants? You know that there has not been one shred of evidence against silicon implants for causing these supposed conditions (in fact, they've done much the opposite)? Yet they can't sell them anymore, no matter how hard they try. Now, I'm not saying I particularly approve of ditses getting their breasts enlarged, but there are legitimate uses for these (e.g., breast cancer survivors), and the company serves a need. In fact, there are legitimate uses for silicon. It is actually one of the safest substances known for medical implants, yet any company that produces medical grade silicon is scared silly that a med tech company will ever use their product without their permission, such that they can be sued. So much so that they will actually go to court to stop you, simply because they can be sued....This might seem a little bit offtopic, but this was the result of bad publicity. The media effectively smeared them, triggering these law suits and what not. The bad press harmed not only the silicon breast implant makers, but also the hundreds of medical technology companies that would use silicon to improve safety and performance. So here is atleast one case of horribly bad publicity. There are many many more.
Furthermore, in this particular situation, we're talking Be getting smeared by, say, 80% of the slashdot community. Since no one else outside of slashdot or the "open source community" could particularly about such niggardly issues, how does Be benefit? It's not as if this made it into the frontpages of mainstream media, or ever will. At most, they benefit from awareness from slashdot readers. In reality, how many slashdot readers do you think don't already know about Be? At worst, they annoyed a large swath of geeks who are morally, or atleast theoretically, supportive of the "open source" movement. Even though in reality, only a small percentage of those who "support" Perens are actually convicted to what they say, this "publicity" has more potential to hurt Be than help them.
I never said you do not have the right to protect your work. In fact, I said you did, if you did not notice. Nor did I say that you, or "all", Open Source advocates participate in piracy. I did, however, question your justification and reasoning for doing so. Although I admit I have not kept close tabs on your assertions lately, I'm quite sure have asserted Open Source to be "better", in so many words, in almost every category of interest. Thus, I still must persist: If Open Source is so superior, why do you feel compelled to use any and all means (e.g., "publicity") to stop it? Why would anyone pay more for less? And if people are doing this of their own volition, why should you care?
It is fundamentally inconsistent of the Open Source community to claim that:
a) Open source is the best. That it always more bug free than closed source. That it is more innovative than closed source. That it provides better support. etc. etc. etc.
b) Closed source (propietary software) freeloading of Open Source code represents a large and significant threat to the movement.
If Open Source is so great, why worry about propietary efforts? If a company comes along and merely extends Open source software, why should this be a great concern to Open Source advocates? If these advocates are to be believed, there is no way that propietary extension could be better (ultimately). What rational person would pay money for an inferior value? [By value I mean, not only how the software in and of itself performs, but its support, and the extent to which moving to or from it actually benefits the user in real life] So why worry?
It would seem to me that these people, who want to assert both "A" and "B", are either blind followers or they understand on some level that propietary software offers some significant benefit over and above what that same open source effort offers. Bruce Perens is particularly aggregigious here in my opinion. In some ways, I can respect RMS more here (even though I have the least in common with him). I've never heard him purport Open source per se to be the best thing since sliced bread. His objections to propietary software is based on "moral grounds", so he can object to propietary freeloading relatively consistently. This is simply not true of the vast remainder of the Open Source camp.
While it is Perens' right try to stop Be from "freeloading," I think he is wrong. I question his motives. I question his thought process, and I question this slashdot public opinion, which is best described as an avalanche. Furthermore, it seems to me that many (but not all, I realize) Open source zealots want to have their copyrights and burn them too. They want the right to freeload music, but don't want software companies to freeload from them....
I believe Open Source offers some significant advantages to propietary software, but is not black and white. When I see anyone painting with such broadstrokes, I'll question them. If I get flamed, and modded down to -43423 so be it, such is the price for honesty.
The recent DOS attacks involved large numbers of infected Linux systems being controlled remotely to help with the attack. Look int he recent news for articles.
I am differentiating between the Linux kernel and the distributions. I fully realize that the actual implimentation of Linux in the various distributions is less than secure. I'm asking you to enumerate what bugs specifically in the kernel were discovered by blackhats before the whitehats. The mainstream press is useless when it comes to technical details such as this.
There is no such backdoor, and the continued insistence to refer to it as such simply points out the FUD factor in the Linux world.
Umm, no. The backdoor exists, just it was not all it was cracked up to be. I believe I alluded to this in my previous comment too. Nonetheless, it is not terribly relevant to my point. Microsoft screwed up. The public did not notice it for years. The degree of the severity of the bug is essentially irrelevant, it was certainly significant enough to get noticed. It certainly casts doubt on Microsoft's auditing practices.
As for being a member of the Linux FUD community, my record speaks otherwise.
I disagree though. It does raise the bar for the average "black hat" to create a _viable_ exploit. While it is mindnumbingly dull for most "white hats." Sure, you can look for certain key strings with a hex editor, but it is not comparable to looking at the entire code and seeing it in context. Certainly if you look at the actual number of published exploits for NT they are relatively few. So we must either conclude that your average black hat has a number of NT exploits which the informed public is unaware of, or they simply don't have it. In either case though, a) neither the admins nor microsoft is doing much about it b) Microsoft gets away with it because the hacking incidence of NT isn't much worse than Unix (and some would argue better) c) a relatively small group of intelligent and motivated individuals can punch holes in almost every NT box on the internet. In other words, the possibility of a highly sucessful systematic attack against supposedly secure NT installations is not exactly outlandish.
What might that be exactly? Was it the linux kernel itself, or something tacked onto one of the distributions? I can't think of any terribly significant bugs in the kernel that were exploited by "black hats" before the vulnerability was published (and normally patched). In any case, the latency between a working exploit circulating amongst black hats and the knowledge of that bug is about nill. Yes, I realize there have been some DoS vulnerabilities in the kernel and some relatively minor security issues (relatively recently, say the past 2-3 years), but all of these to my knowledge have been published by white hats (those who publish their work, not exploit others). I fully realize that this is not "effective security", insofar as many admins can't secure their machines before the so-called script kiddies can. In terms of "ultimate security" (as I described in my previous post) though, I still believe Linux to be well ahead of NT.
The problem is that this is hard to prove empirically. If we know about the exploit shortly after blackhats do, then it's hardly "ultimate." And if we do not know,...well we just don't know. We can, however, make some inferences. We all know the abismal record of microsoft when it comes to bugs. For example, we know this recent "Netscape engineers are weenies!" backdoor remained unobserved by the general population for years. Yet it is hard to deny that any sufficiently motivated individual could have discovered it. Thus we can reasonably infer that an organization such as the KGB could have taken advantage of this bug (not that it was all it was cracked up to be) and exploited a great many machines before the public ever saw a fix. While I realize that i'm comparing apples to oranges here, I've yet to see an analogous situation with the Linux kernel, and I've seen enough with NT (in and of itself) to connect the dots....
As far as the Open Source advocates go, I generally find ESR the most levelheaded. ESR is probably right insofar as a blatant backdoor with "Netscape engineers are weenies!" would never escape scrutiny in something such as the Linux kernel. However, his claims were a bit too broad to be digested meaningfully by the masses. Levy addressed ESR's claims. Levy was not claiming "security through obscurity" in and of itself is sufficient. Quite the contrary, he said that many black hats can operate a hex editor and find bugs that way. What he did say was that closed source can offer a significant obstacle to discovery of trivial bugs by black hats. Although it might be obvious when you think about it, many Open Source people hold it as an article of faith that if you take the same source, any source, and Open Source it, it automatically becomes effectively more secure in, say, 6 months. This is simply not the case when you look at the empirical evidence. In other words, if you own some source code to an application, "opening" your code may hurt or it may help your effective security. The change in security is contingent on the specific situation.
For example, do you really believe that Mozilla is any more secure than Netscape? It obviously contains hundreds of thousands of bugs still. Open source has yet to resolve even more obvious stability bugs, so I think it is reasonable to assume there are significant security issues there as well. Not enough qualified people are truely spending the time to examine and fix it. So what we have is source with bugs, but a situation where any blackhat hacker can run grep/sed/awk/perl/etc on it to look for trivial bugs. If this same source were closed, it _would_ raise the bar for creating a viable exploit significantly.
On the other end of the scale, we have something like Linux's kernel. Thousands of qualified people really do work and look at the code. The size is managable. The code is easy to understand. The code is modular. All this works in Linux's favor. I sincerely believe the Linux kernel in and of itself (e.g., not the thousands of binaries that come with Linux distros) to be more secure than NT's.
To make a long story short, the change in security is contingent on the situation. That being said, I do think Open source affords significantly improved security against highly systematic attacks against dedicated attackers. The more reviewed Open source code (e.g., Linux) is at the very least a moving target. The odds of a single blackhat exploiting a bug en masse before the thousands of white hats can close it is quite slim. In other words, although Linux and NT may appear equally secure today, this is just against your average black hat. Your average black hat really isn't all that intelligent or motivated. So Microsoft can afford much less secure code due to their closed source nature and still maintain apparently equal security. Some organization, let's say the KGG, could throw enough brains at Microsoft binaries to create a program to silently scan and backdoor every Microsoft server on the internet, using this as a gateway to more sensitive internal company data (e.g., many companies have worthless firewalls)...A few admins may notice something foul, but many don't fully understand the security model. Fewer yet have the skill to reverse engineer such an attack even partway. And virtually no one other than the big bad evil blackhat group would have the resources or the time to create a working exploit. Consequently, Microsoft can never be made to look sufficiently foolish to force them to do anything. Operations cannot shut down just because of suspected bugs. It would continue getting exploited.
The bottom line is that apparent security (e.g., the number of known NT exploits vs known Linux) and ultimate security (in scenario's such as the one described above) are different....
Slashdot Mirror
Before you jump on me about them having full CDs, when I said "checksum", I really meant they might have some kind of cryptographic hash (e.g., MD5 as is believed), but this is not entirely equivelent to possessing a full CD to check the data against, especially since the client presumably allows for a certain number of bad challenge responses (e.g., scratched CDs). Unless mp3.com publishes the protocol they use to authenticate the challenge replies against the CD or the representation of it (e.g., hash), we really can't know with any certainty what method they are using, nor how secure it is (even the implimentation of the same protocols can make or break its security). Given the fact that the burden of having their service effectively cracked is not on them (at most they have to replace it with a better method), I could easily see them underestimating the threat from hackers, or simply not caring (figuring instead that they can battle it in the courts and absorb whatever costs...and given the history of the CEO and what not, I wouldn't put that past them)
..gotta bolt.
My observation is not entirely second hand. I saw this stuff in its early stages, and heard rumblings of it well before it was official. Also, I used this software last night, nothing is truely inconsistent with what I said...
How do you know it is cryptographic? Even if you do "know", how do you know it is sufficiently cryptographic? I highly doubt they store the entire CD in its original form. In fact, I suspect they store just a few cryptographic checksums for the sake of bandwidth, database design, storage space, speed, and reliability. Knowing mp3.com, I strongly doubt they're greatly concerned with the actual security; so long as they can say they took "reasonable precautions", or what have you, they feel they can get away with this. [In fact, I suspect the slashdot communitity and other Net Zealots would rally behind mp3.com even if it is proven to be trivial to pirate from it, and that the vast majority of the service's traffic is piracy (This is certainly true with napster)] Thus, I think it is highly probable that all the data the service is looking for could be captured and sufficiently described in a couple bytes (a fraction of the actual mp3 album's size in any case). Furthermore, there is not one product that comes to mind that claims cryptographic security that has actually withstood hackers efforts--certainly none where the interests in actual security do not lie with the creator.
I must disagree with you here. It is a trivial matter to convert these streams into mp3 files. The hackers could also distribute a program to automate it, not that it is really necessary. In addition, I've been around IRC and warez pups long enough to know that the most limiting factor of piracy distribution is bandwidth and storage space. If hackers could enable users to download from mp3.com's multihoned fiber optic site with essentially infinite bandwidth (it will naturally scale with demand) with only a mere 100bytes per CD out of their pipes and harddrives, it would be very easy for them, and the user. It would also be next to impossible to stop. Think about it for a minute, one ~5 megabyte upload to a newsgroups (or many of them) and the group could give access to anyone with access to that newsgroup to my.mp3.com's entire CD collection (assuming 50k CDs with 100 bytes per CD representation). Very very trivial. It'd would beat the pants off of napster for 99.99% of its traffic (e.g., all the popular 50k CDs mp3.com has archived)--much improved bandwidth, easier searching, better presentation, reliable download sites, and a huge collection of CDs at your finger tips in an organized fashion. I'd bet dollars to pesos that someone figures out a way to make it happen too. (assuming this service doesnt get shut down too rapidly)
RIAA may or may not be motivated by more self-centered concerns as well, but this does not automatically rule out the possibility of a serious threat to their revenues as I described. Even though this tool does not yet exist, these things can take years on appeal, and they might never get an injunction against them (atleast a timely one).
I'm not your typical slashdotter. In fact, I'm not your typical anything. I don't walk lockstep with any group, be they capitalist or communist, or what have you. That being said, I think this "information wants to be free" line is a line of idealistic bullshit. Also, I'd like to remind you, that despite the "net" and all the much acclaimed innovations by Net advocates, the artists still choose to sign with these major labels of their own volition, even though they only get of a small fraction of the revenues from each sale. Nobody is pointing a gun to the artists' heads and forcing them to sign. This means that the labels are providing more value to the artists through distribution, marketing, sound engineers, etc. than if they tried to go it alone. It may be true that the labels enjoy an unfair percentage of the revenues, but even here I have doubts. If you look at these publically owned corporations, their profitability is not all that high. Yes, it is lucrative, but not much more so than any other business. It a lot costs money to promote, market, distribute, etc. Thus, even though they enjoy a large share of the profits of a sucessfull CD, they must plow it back into their operations so they can continue to be sucessfull and provide greater value to the artists.
Yes, this is often cited. I would never claim the industry is infallible. However, there is a world of difference between this and the internet with unopposed piracy. My.mp3.com with the piracy i've described makes it entirely too trivial to obtain songs. Given the growing presence of broadband (which makes my.mp3.com a joy to use, I know from experience), and the plethora of mp3 devices (have you seen the Nomad Jukebox), I can see a real threat if internet piracy goes unchecked. Pirating mp3s through this service may very well be easier than running out to the store or ordering it onlinem, atleast amongst users who are sufficiently intelligent, broadband computer users, and owners of sophisticated mp3 devices.
The bottom line is that the industry may be myopic and stupid and greedy sometimes, but that does not automatically invalidate rational criticisms of my.mp3.com's service in regards to piracy.
Without getting too involved in the legal issues and what not...
.com), only you punch in a code representing the CD, which then creates a fake CD device, with all the data mp3.com's is looking to verify (and _nothing_ more). Once mp3.com's software has scanned your "fake CD" for a few seconds, if my understanding is correct, you then have access to those mp3s from anywhere you go (or you can just download the mp3s). Then all the little warez groups can effectively distribute mp3s at people with a mere 20 bytes or so of data (a compressed representation of whatever the software is looking for).
Did anyone ever consider the possibility of this my.mp3.com service really trivializing mp3 piracy? I mean mp3.com writes some trivial piece of software that reads the CD. This might be OK, if it really works as claimed. However, I have little doubt that it wouldn't take a hacker long to write a hack to "fool" mp3.com's software. It would something like fakeCD.exe (or was it
The point being that this has the possibility to really trivialize the pirating of mp3s. Based on my years on IRC and what not, the primary limiting factor for the distribution of warez is the lack of bandwidth on the part of the groups, not the lack of willing parties. Certainly if #cracks on efnet, for example, can maintain a large database of serial numbers (a few bytes a piece) on a bunch of different bots, the same could, and would, be done for my.mp3.com. Or, just create a single "official" warez file, which contains the codes for all popular CDs...if each CD representation (e.g., artist name, album name, cd identifier, etc.) takes 100bytes, that'd be about 10k CDs in a 1 meg CSV file. Very trivial to distribute and virtually impossible to stop that, plus it's only one download, so it'd be harder for all involved parties to get busted.
I think this is dooable, and I think it would be trivial enough to have a profound impact on RIAA's collective earnings. As unfair as it might seem, I'm not so sure that RIAA is necessarily being greedy or overzealous here.
Ok so radio stations are corporate controlled. So what? How does Metallica suing Napster for their stuff being illegally distributed really stop you from distributing your stuff on the internet? It is not as if Napster is the only way to distribute "indy" music on the internet. In fact, dare I say it, it's a horrible way to do it because the user can only search for substrings; this is hardly an ideal way to promote your music. Mp3.com, numerous ftp sites, and the like provide a far far better way to get your music out to the masses. Nor is it as if, metallica is suing to stop YOUR music from being distributed for free against your wishes; they are only suing for their own IP. If napster is all it claims to be, then the absolute absence of pirated music should not interfere with its more legitimate activities (although everyone knows in reality that that piracy is the only reason they exist).
In addition, this "information wants to be free" line is crap. There is no way in hell anyone could have ever produced an exact copy of metallica's mp3s. In other words, Metallica's attempts to stop the illegal distribution of mp3 of their CDs does nothing to stop the legitimate sharing of "free" music. Unlike the possible argument with other forms of IP protection, it does not possibly restrain anyone from indepedantly creating their own works. Metallica would only produce their music if they could make a living from it, and maybe even a "killing". Thus, given the choice between everything being "free" (read: No metallica) versus somethings costing money (read: metallica), even the rational cheapskate should prefer the latter. Even if the person personally don't want to purchase (or lack the funds) Metallica, they can still listen to it on the radio, copy their music, and generally benefit from its existence.
sweet, tnx for telling us. I've always loved Kenwood's quality, so i'll definetly consider this (would appreciate a link,...if I cant find it). The CDR/mp3 capability has some definite advantages. However, my primary motivation for an mp3 player is to have a HUGE collection of music EASILY (assuming the empeg UI is any good, which i'm not sure of yet) available at my finger tips. Having to insert or find CDs just isn't quite the same thing, even if it is 8x as much music as standard audio cds.
But what does it really mean to "figure" it out? If we were advanced humans, but ignorant of CDs, we would still enjoy the use of sound as a medium of communication. We would already understand the language, and what certain instruments are meant to sound like. In other words, we would know what to look for. The alien would have no idea to look for "sound", they wouldn't know how it sounded, and they certainly wouldn't know our language. I think establishing meaningfull communication with a species which we have nothing in common with would be very very difficult. It would probably be impossible if it's not interactive communication (e.g., one way).
Disclaimer: I'm haven't studied this stuff a great deal. But if someone could give me a good argument as to how we could go about this, that would be most interesting. I've heard about communication through "math" and what not, and while I understand it could establish intelligence, I fail to see where else it could lead.
Disclaimer: I'm not an astronomy buff.
As much as I disagree with Perens in other areas, I don't think this is necessarily US centric. Russia may very well have the scientists and the engineering experience to design these things, but that is only one important element of the space program. They still need to manufacture. Unfortunately, manufacturing is largely a function of the economy. Not only does it cost billions, which Russia does not have, to produce these things under ideal conditions, but when Russia doesn't even have the stability or the economy for OTHER (as in the rest of the economy) production, it is going to be next to impossible to follow through on the plans. While Russia's economy under communist rule was piss poor, they were sufficiently stable and "wealthy" for such narrow objectives. Today, they are not. They lack to totalitarian rule to divert resources around arbitrarily. The limited infrastructures which they had built up are falling apart, or being torn down. For example, Moscow has had severe problems lately even keeping power lines up, because desperate people have been cutting down high power lines for the cabling (to sell presumably). Add to this problems with staffing, corruption, etc. It would be difficult to even build a modern automobile today (which is why you see very little investment of this kind in Russia), never mind spacecraft.
The bottom line is, that, if Russia can't follow through on their promises, it may very well cost as much much more be politic. That being said, there might be something to be said for this cooperation (e.g. promote pride amongst Russian people, promote mutual good will, etc.), even though it costs us more (in the short run?).
Disclaimer: I'm not an astronomy buff.
Your above argument is incoherant. In both the present and the proposed situation, the pricing, and thus the effective control of the usage, is entirely up to Amazon. They may or may not sell anything at the specified price, but it is the same in both situations. The only difference being that your proposal says: "You must license your technology, but you can choose the price". For all intents and purposes though, this gives Amazon the ability to stop anyone from using it. The power to determine the pricing lies in Amazon's hands in both situation. Whether the usage comes from today's licensing fees or your proposed "tax", buyers' (read: market) strength is the same.
My example, in case you did not understand, was: 2000 (monopoly rents) + 4000 (manufacturing and administrative costs) = 6000 (selling price). The point being that the power to reduce prices really does not rest in the competitions hand, as the price is mainly a function of monopoly rents, not manufacturing costs. You might have an argument that they could reduce manufacturing costs slightly, but this is nominal. In fact, I would say that the propensity of the inventing company to overcharge would more than overtake whatever savings the competitors are able to generate (almost by definition). Thus, prices would not be reduced. The pharma-company with the "life saving" medication can still determine the selling price.
This doesn't follow either.
I would hardly say a system which is burdened with the same or more economic bagage than today is "unrestricted." The "sharing" you discuss would be heavily contigent on the "tax" the inventor sets. So it is not as if alternative companies could cherry pick the best patents and idea. For instance, if I spend 500m inventing an artificial pancreas, and I know the market for my product is only so big (e.g., diabetics), and that my patent is not going to be worth much in 2 years, I would be sure to set my per unit tax up such that I collect atleast 2000 dollars on every sale. Thus, when the competition comes along, they have variable costs of atleast 2000 dollars plus materials and labor, not to mention the fixed costs of setting up a plant, buying the machinery, etc. So what we have in a product that sells for at least 6000 dollars, quite possibly more expensive (because I set the tax) than my operation. What little other benefit provided to the consumer through "sharing" is soon lost too. If the competition wishes to add other IP protected features from other companies, say, a 10 year life battery, they're going to have to pay, say, 4000 here....so this mixing, matching, and building upon other things quickly can become prohibitably expensive.
That is non sequitur. Amazon, under your system, is still entitled to charge whatever they please. So long as they hold the one-click patent, and it holds up in court (which I doubt it will today), they could charge all of their competitors a fee which would allow them to charge less than the competition. The competitors who wish to use the technology still must pay whatever Amazon desires, just like today (again, assuming the courts support amazon which I doubt). Amazon's theoretical patent protection is worth quite a bit in actuality, but they did not create this value. Your system simply doesn't fix this.
Furthermore, your statement that the return of a patent would be contingent on its value is meaningless. Holding a patent today, in and of, itself does not bring the inventor any return. People must buy or utilize the patent in order to have any hope of return. Thus, worthless patents are worthless. Worthwhile patents are worth a lot. Your system does not change this.
The problem is that your assertion that your "system" would necessarily solve issues such as overpriced medicine is utterly incoherant with the above. If it is entirely up to the owner, they can price it prohibitively high. In other words, companies that don't want to share, won't. Companies that do, will. This is how it is today, the same for all intents and purposes. The only other alternative is to formally administrate, with academic types, who don't know the first thing about business.
Read above, goes hand in hand with it.
Having been behind many sucessfull high tech companies, I can tell you that the vast majority of these "alternative" (read: non-profit) models are a joke. They are run by academics almost by definition. This is not a market based system, it's nearer to central planning (read: communism). In addition, these organization are almost by definition going to have burn through money like nothing else. Who is going to foot the bill? Right now, you have a few organizations which can scrounge up a little change (e.g., the NIH, NSF, NASA, ADA, AMA, etc.) But this system would not work on a large scale, a little charity here and there does not fuel our economy. It would require serious tax dollars. Not that i'm entirely opposed to government investment, but generally speaking I think it's not a replacement for genuine capitalist motivations for investment (read: de-centralized).
Umm, no. The patent office has serious flaws. They could be improved somewhat. But it is the courts where the power truely lies, the patent office has always operated as more of a filling service than anything out (granted, they do some filtering, but not much more). I do not envision anyway to really change this all that much for the better. Many of these legal fights are inevitable, even necessary. Assuming you could ever hire the "best" people to be patent examiners, there is no way you can insure that they are honest or accurate. Intellectual property protection is by its very nature highly complex. It's really not cut out for one guy to summarily grant or dismiss everything...thus we rely on the courts. I don't think it's "perfect", but I don't see a more optimal solution...certainly not yours.
I don't think risk and reward can be understated. Since you are making noise about reducing "costs" or "profits", the curbing of rewards, and hence reducation innovation cannot be ignored. I don't see way how this system could drive down the base price significantly, while allowing innovation to remain constant (read: preserving rewards). The costs in most of these products involve the R&D costs, the initial outlays, marketing, etc.... Where you see increased costs is where companies will charge a premium for a new product...which is part of their reward....which is what you say you're going to try preserve.
Perhaps, but if the rate is set arbitrarily, it may (and probably would) be less than what the risk takers currently make, so you're less apt to see investment like that.
You might not be interested in it, but you can be sure the risk takers are. There are many fields where even with today's "monopolies" they hardly break even on R&D. The more you cut potential reward, the less profitable you make it, the more you increase the aggregate risk. Do not forget that these inventors rely on external capital. So even if one sucessfull firm returns 10x what was invested, the outside investors need atleast that to break even on expected value, because they investors aren't necessarily able to improve their odds--they don't know who the winners are going to be. This is especially true with bio and med tech firms.
First off, most patents aren't this "necessary". There are normally other alternatives available. Second, empirically speaking, there is simply no evidence of this. Hundreds of life saving inventions have been invented in the US alone, and not one case. Third, the companies only want to maximize profits, the maximum price is not the way to go about this. Fourth, the law can always intervene in truely extreme cases. Fifth, these limits are extremely dangerous for previously mentioned reasons (e.g., risk and return). It may be better from a utilitarian perspective to allow a couple people to die as the result of economic concerns, if the alternative is killing the thing that is saving even more lives.
Not worthless, just the effective life of most patents is not nearly as long as most slashdot juniors believe.
If the inventor sets the rate, it would be the same as today's system for all intents and purposes. Companies license their technology ALL the time. In fact, unlike you alluded to, few companies will sit on patents which are worthwhile. If they can't make use of them, they'll generally sell or license them. There is a market for them.
If a company cannot gain a competetive advantage by spending millions of dollars on R&D, they simply won't. Your system might allow already existing technology to be commercially shared, but that does not mean future technology will come out (and thus will not be shared at all).
What market?!?! If the inventors determine their percentages, it might as well be today's system. If not, then you're depending on a more arbitrary system to determine how much is "fair". What a "good" technology is. You come to depend on a bunch of academics who decide what to do..
The system is efficient. There has never been a time in history, or a place, which pars the level of effort or result into developing technologies. The technologies that "languish" are generally obselete and worthless. Any decently managed company which is aware of any usefull technology would sell it or use it if they thought it was dooable. Lastly, look at the profitability of almost any of these companies. You can claim they have monopolies all you want, but on the aggregate none of them are making a killing. R&D is very very expensive and risky. I can't stress this enough.
...What "multiple funding models"? Sounds like abstract and poorly developed concept.....
anyhow, office is shutting down...apologies in advance for spelling, gramatical, typos, html, etc. errors.
I really wasn't expecting you to reply here. You could have replied in the comment. However, this thread is labeleled offtopic (OT), and I think most people can just step around it. Since you replied here, I might as well do the same....
My problem with this your reply is that a great many of these Open Source advocates claim (including you, I believe, but i'll give you the benefit of the doubt) that Open Source is superior in every way. Their excuse for the lack of Open Source domination in most areas, goes something like: "Open source hasn't been around long enough", "Not enough eyes here", "this is too new", etc. However, with your example (and others, where software derives from GPL software) these arguments do not hold water. The companies are merely adding to something that already exists--they do not have any sort of headstart or propietary advantage. If the propietary/commercial process is inferior as claimed, the companies have nothing to add (atleast nothing that would withstand matching efforts by an involved Open Source community). What rational person would buy a commercial product, when they can get Open Source software that services (according to numerous advocates) their needs better? Virtually no one. Thus, why the need for "publicity against Be"? Why the need for implicit or explicit legal threats? Why make GPL viral--as opposed to BSD style license (other than allowing for certain eventualities)?
If you merely feel that GPL is less than a perfect replacement for commercial/propietary software, but morally superior (or superior from a long term utilitarian perspective), and thus needs protection, that makes sense (in the context of the assertions). But this is not what I've heard from the vast majority of advocates. If I am reading you wrong, or if you disagree with these "advocates", then I wish you'd step out of only-positive-open-source-words-allowed mode, and speak candidly. I don't believe you're doing Open Source any good in the long run by allowing these clearly contradictory messages to go unchallenged; it will ultimately serve to discredit the movement.
Bruce,
3 4211&cid=293
I asked you a question at:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=00/04/18/13
You responded to my original comment, but completely misinterpreted what I said, and did not address my question in any way, shape, or form. I would appreciate a meaningfull response.
Thanks,
Fall
Your plan, like many, sounds fine in theory. The inventors get "rewarded" for their efforts. Whoopie. However, you are ignoring the very important relationship of risk and return. Just because you provide "some return" to the risk taker, the inventor, does not mean he will continue to take risk. These so-called monopolies happen to be a very efficient way to provide a high degree of return. Perhaps it is sometimes too high, but to propose that the government sets what is "fair" begs for the creation of a far less efficient system.
...but many proposals are unrealistic. There is always going to be disagreements and flaws in any system you create, that is human nature...] Many slashdot users simply fail to understand that not everything can be created like Linux (e.g., people working part-time in ragtag fashion). They seem to think that some panel of "experts", is a better decider of "value" than the market. Yet, if you talk to most any proven entreprenuer/inventor, they scoff at the idea of academics deciding value.... I've known numerous entreprenuers with proven track records to go in front of these "alternative sources of financing" boards (e.g., NIH, NSF, etc.) with great and truely usefull ideas, only to be rejected [or given peanuts] (not even for financial reasons, the money went to far less worthy projects)...only to be ultimately proven right. Lastly, one need look no further than the massive amounts spent by large and small companies alike to conclude that the _actual_ IP system works decently.
Furthermore, the mere fact that the government grants a "monopoly" on the idea for 17 years, does not mean the holder enjoys any such protection. In the vast majority of cases, competitors come out with equivelent products without having to go through the patent. So, if the effective life of the patent is only 5 years (actually quite high in many areas), it is all that much more important that the inventor ramp up his profits at the outset. To provide a smooth (or flat) "patent tax" tax, or one that is set arbitrarily by the government, might prove harmfull in two ways. If reward (read: tax x usage) are too low at the outset, this will lower the incentive for the inventor. Second, if it is too low, it may discourage the competing companies from trying to come up with unique alternative solutions of their own. Instead, they just "license" it as your "reasonable" fee. All in all, it would create a pretty apathetic system...perhaps not quite as bad as no IP, but significantly worse than what we have now.
In closing, the patent system is more necessary than it ever was. Sure, there are some abuses, but it is blown out of proportion by slashdot users. Slashdot confuses the mere existence of a patent, with the ability to profit and enjoy that protection. The patent office has been flawed for years, but the test is not the patent office, it is the courts. In other words, the granting of a patent does not mean it holds up in the real world, so to blow a few odd patents up as proof that "innovation" is now impossible is simply not true. [Yes, I agree the patent office has serious flaws,
My sentiments exactly. Something tells me though that Perens had every intention of dodging my question. So I really doubt he'll have the courage to bite the bullet now. I mean, gasp, can you imagine admitting that open source has flaws? That might just be non-religious!
I'm sorry, but you're pulling this out of your ass. Is it possible you're right? I guess. But you have absolutely no way to prove this, and you are wrong about some of your statements. There is nothing random about the selection of the pilot on your flight, nor, for that matter, the rest of the pilots up in the sky with you. They are carefully selected professionals, who generally take their jobs very seriously. If they don't, the FAA is all over them like white on rice. They have sophisticated radar, and accident investigations to prevent repeated errors.... I could go on. Compare this with driving: No one on the road is tested or screened worth a damn (at least not in the US). So what you have is essentially random drivers next to you on the road. If a driver has a demonstratably horrible driving record, you're lucky if the DMV even confiscates their license. What more is many of these supposedly suspended drivers still drive. Add to this 18-wheelers, and truckers who are not quite all there (ever seen some of those double logging trucks in washington state?), soccer moms in 4 ton SUVs on the cell phone driving 20 miles over the limit swerving into the opposing traffic, pot holes, blind free way onramps, etc. I could see your arguing this if you live in like bummfuck north dakota (where you can be virtually alone on a road), but if you live in a major city, it is really hard to deny the risks.
I am a good driver. I am defensive driver. I live in philly. I know I increase my safety significantly, but having driven on I76 and numerous other roads often, I know that I only have so much control. I've seen little imports with absolutely no escape route (sometimes it simply is impossible to avoid, other than not driving at all) get crushed by truckers. I am not foolish enough to think that even my driving is safer than flying on a major jet airliner (as opposed to those commuter and charter flights)
Heh, no such thing as bad publicity eh? Why don't you tell that to the Dow Corning, makers of sillicon breast implants? You know that there has not been one shred of evidence against silicon implants for causing these supposed conditions (in fact, they've done much the opposite)? Yet they can't sell them anymore, no matter how hard they try. Now, I'm not saying I particularly approve of ditses getting their breasts enlarged, but there are legitimate uses for these (e.g., breast cancer survivors), and the company serves a need. In fact, there are legitimate uses for silicon. It is actually one of the safest substances known for medical implants, yet any company that produces medical grade silicon is scared silly that a med tech company will ever use their product without their permission, such that they can be sued. So much so that they will actually go to court to stop you, simply because they can be sued....This might seem a little bit offtopic, but this was the result of bad publicity. The media effectively smeared them, triggering these law suits and what not. The bad press harmed not only the silicon breast implant makers, but also the hundreds of medical technology companies that would use silicon to improve safety and performance. So here is atleast one case of horribly bad publicity. There are many many more.
Furthermore, in this particular situation, we're talking Be getting smeared by, say, 80% of the slashdot community. Since no one else outside of slashdot or the "open source community" could particularly about such niggardly issues, how does Be benefit? It's not as if this made it into the frontpages of mainstream media, or ever will. At most, they benefit from awareness from slashdot readers. In reality, how many slashdot readers do you think don't already know about Be? At worst, they annoyed a large swath of geeks who are morally, or atleast theoretically, supportive of the "open source" movement. Even though in reality, only a small percentage of those who "support" Perens are actually convicted to what they say, this "publicity" has more potential to hurt Be than help them.
I never said you do not have the right to protect your work. In fact, I said you did, if you did not notice. Nor did I say that you, or "all", Open Source advocates participate in piracy. I did, however, question your justification and reasoning for doing so. Although I admit I have not kept close tabs on your assertions lately, I'm quite sure have asserted Open Source to be "better", in so many words, in almost every category of interest. Thus, I still must persist: If Open Source is so superior, why do you feel compelled to use any and all means (e.g., "publicity") to stop it? Why would anyone pay more for less? And if people are doing this of their own volition, why should you care?
It is fundamentally inconsistent of the Open Source community to claim that:
a) Open source is the best. That it always more bug free than closed source. That it is more innovative than closed source. That it provides better support. etc. etc. etc.
b) Closed source (propietary software) freeloading of Open Source code represents a large and significant threat to the movement.
If Open Source is so great, why worry about propietary efforts? If a company comes along and merely extends Open source software, why should this be a great concern to Open Source advocates? If these advocates are to be believed, there is no way that propietary extension could be better (ultimately). What rational person would pay money for an inferior value? [By value I mean, not only how the software in and of itself performs, but its support, and the extent to which moving to or from it actually benefits the user in real life] So why worry?
It would seem to me that these people, who want to assert both "A" and "B", are either blind followers or they understand on some level that propietary software offers some significant benefit over and above what that same open source effort offers. Bruce Perens is particularly aggregigious here in my opinion. In some ways, I can respect RMS more here (even though I have the least in common with him). I've never heard him purport Open source per se to be the best thing since sliced bread. His objections to propietary software is based on "moral grounds", so he can object to propietary freeloading relatively consistently. This is simply not true of the vast remainder of the Open Source camp.
While it is Perens' right try to stop Be from "freeloading," I think he is wrong. I question his motives. I question his thought process, and I question this slashdot public opinion, which is best described as an avalanche. Furthermore, it seems to me that many (but not all, I realize) Open source zealots want to have their copyrights and burn them too. They want the right to freeload music, but don't want software companies to freeload from them....
I believe Open Source offers some significant advantages to propietary software, but is not black and white. When I see anyone painting with such broadstrokes, I'll question them. If I get flamed, and modded down to -43423 so be it, such is the price for honesty.
FYI: http://www.techweb.com/wire/story/TWB20000417S0001
hardly irrelevant, or non-existant.
I am differentiating between the Linux kernel and the distributions. I fully realize that the actual implimentation of Linux in the various distributions is less than secure. I'm asking you to enumerate what bugs specifically in the kernel were discovered by blackhats before the whitehats. The mainstream press is useless when it comes to technical details such as this.
Umm, no. The backdoor exists, just it was not all it was cracked up to be. I believe I alluded to this in my previous comment too. Nonetheless, it is not terribly relevant to my point. Microsoft screwed up. The public did not notice it for years. The degree of the severity of the bug is essentially irrelevant, it was certainly significant enough to get noticed. It certainly casts doubt on Microsoft's auditing practices.
As for being a member of the Linux FUD community, my record speaks otherwise.
I disagree though. It does raise the bar for the average "black hat" to create a _viable_ exploit. While it is mindnumbingly dull for most "white hats." Sure, you can look for certain key strings with a hex editor, but it is not comparable to looking at the entire code and seeing it in context. Certainly if you look at the actual number of published exploits for NT they are relatively few. So we must either conclude that your average black hat has a number of NT exploits which the informed public is unaware of, or they simply don't have it. In either case though, a) neither the admins nor microsoft is doing much about it b) Microsoft gets away with it because the hacking incidence of NT isn't much worse than Unix (and some would argue better) c) a relatively small group of intelligent and motivated individuals can punch holes in almost every NT box on the internet. In other words, the possibility of a highly sucessful systematic attack against supposedly secure NT installations is not exactly outlandish.
What might that be exactly? Was it the linux kernel itself, or something tacked onto one of the distributions? I can't think of any terribly significant bugs in the kernel that were exploited by "black hats" before the vulnerability was published (and normally patched). In any case, the latency between a working exploit circulating amongst black hats and the knowledge of that bug is about nill. Yes, I realize there have been some DoS vulnerabilities in the kernel and some relatively minor security issues (relatively recently, say the past 2-3 years), but all of these to my knowledge have been published by white hats (those who publish their work, not exploit others). I fully realize that this is not "effective security", insofar as many admins can't secure their machines before the so-called script kiddies can. In terms of "ultimate security" (as I described in my previous post) though, I still believe Linux to be well ahead of NT.
The problem is that this is hard to prove empirically. If we know about the exploit shortly after blackhats do, then it's hardly "ultimate." And if we do not know,...well we just don't know. We can, however, make some inferences. We all know the abismal record of microsoft when it comes to bugs. For example, we know this recent "Netscape engineers are weenies!" backdoor remained unobserved by the general population for years. Yet it is hard to deny that any sufficiently motivated individual could have discovered it. Thus we can reasonably infer that an organization such as the KGB could have taken advantage of this bug (not that it was all it was cracked up to be) and exploited a great many machines before the public ever saw a fix. While I realize that i'm comparing apples to oranges here, I've yet to see an analogous situation with the Linux kernel, and I've seen enough with NT (in and of itself) to connect the dots....
As far as the Open Source advocates go, I generally find ESR the most levelheaded. ESR is probably right insofar as a blatant backdoor with "Netscape engineers are weenies!" would never escape scrutiny in something such as the Linux kernel. However, his claims were a bit too broad to be digested meaningfully by the masses. Levy addressed ESR's claims. Levy was not claiming "security through obscurity" in and of itself is sufficient. Quite the contrary, he said that many black hats can operate a hex editor and find bugs that way. What he did say was that closed source can offer a significant obstacle to discovery of trivial bugs by black hats. Although it might be obvious when you think about it, many Open Source people hold it as an article of faith that if you take the same source, any source, and Open Source it, it automatically becomes effectively more secure in, say, 6 months. This is simply not the case when you look at the empirical evidence. In other words, if you own some source code to an application, "opening" your code may hurt or it may help your effective security. The change in security is contingent on the specific situation.
For example, do you really believe that Mozilla is any more secure than Netscape? It obviously contains hundreds of thousands of bugs still. Open source has yet to resolve even more obvious stability bugs, so I think it is reasonable to assume there are significant security issues there as well. Not enough qualified people are truely spending the time to examine and fix it. So what we have is source with bugs, but a situation where any blackhat hacker can run grep/sed/awk/perl/etc on it to look for trivial bugs. If this same source were closed, it _would_ raise the bar for creating a viable exploit significantly.
On the other end of the scale, we have something like Linux's kernel. Thousands of qualified people really do work and look at the code. The size is managable. The code is easy to understand. The code is modular. All this works in Linux's favor. I sincerely believe the Linux kernel in and of itself (e.g., not the thousands of binaries that come with Linux distros) to be more secure than NT's.
To make a long story short, the change in security is contingent on the situation. That being said, I do think Open source affords significantly improved security against highly systematic attacks against dedicated attackers. The more reviewed Open source code (e.g., Linux) is at the very least a moving target. The odds of a single blackhat exploiting a bug en masse before the thousands of white hats can close it is quite slim. In other words, although Linux and NT may appear equally secure today, this is just against your average black hat. Your average black hat really isn't all that intelligent or motivated. So Microsoft can afford much less secure code due to their closed source nature and still maintain apparently equal security. Some organization, let's say the KGG, could throw enough brains at Microsoft binaries to create a program to silently scan and backdoor every Microsoft server on the internet, using this as a gateway to more sensitive internal company data (e.g., many companies have worthless firewalls)...A few admins may notice something foul, but many don't fully understand the security model. Fewer yet have the skill to reverse engineer such an attack even partway. And virtually no one other than the big bad evil blackhat group would have the resources or the time to create a working exploit. Consequently, Microsoft can never be made to look sufficiently foolish to force them to do anything. Operations cannot shut down just because of suspected bugs. It would continue getting exploited.
The bottom line is that apparent security (e.g., the number of known NT exploits vs known Linux) and ultimate security (in scenario's such as the one described above) are different....
...gotta run. bye